A chronicle of my gaming adventures and misadventures with a little bit of everything occasionally tossed in. It covers Flames of War, Warhammer 40k and Fantasy battle, Disposable Heroes, Sky galleons of Mars, Chasepot and Needle Gun, The Sword and the Flame, Warhammer Ancients and many others.

Thursday, March 27, 2014

Hi Kids, Well as hard as it may be to believe I have actually been doing some painting recently. Wow, I know! I decided I might as well try to finish off some Kryomek vehicles I've been accumulating over the past couple years. Ever since SJ released the One Macroture: a 1/60 GEV, I've had this weird idea to play Ogre in 25mm using whatever I have sitting around the house to substitute for the other Ogre conventional vehicles. I had a few Kryomek Nexus vehicles since they look pretty cool and you can get them with tracks, wheels, Grav or hover; with tank guns, assault guns, missiles, and APC type weaponry. I figured they'd be great! I just finished painting the final handful, the only one left is missing some bits so it'll have to wait until the Basement decides to reveal the proper kitbashing parts. Bummer, I know, but the Basement has a mind of it's own and it's own agenda.

This is a kitbashed Mobile Howitzer tank; a Kryomek missile tank tracked hull with resin bits I bought off ebay for a turret and artillery gun. I realized the turret doesn't really match the style of the hull, but it seemed a good way to come up with the one vehicle the range doesn't supply, the Mobile Howitzer. Damn, I just realized I haven't been able to find the Armorcast howitzer I bought a million years ago. I guess this project isn't as close to completion as I thought. Oh well....
And yes, that's the world famous triple grey and black camo of the 13th DBLE, my Imperial Army unit for 40K.

Five missile tanks, all 100% Kryomek. You can buy these things from Noble Knight for about $15.00, or Kryomek USA for $25.00. You can also buy bags of guns, hatches, MG's, twin MG's, rotary MG's, etc etc for about $4.00. They even make buildings.

Two wheeled APC's, called Sand Carriers. The last remaining unfinished hull is another one of these, it lacks the small turret. The crew fig is a leftover Void tank crewman.

The last three are wheeled Assault Guns, called a Dark Ogre in the Nexus vehicle line.
The hardcore Ogre fans out there might have noticed another missing bit o' kit; an Ogre. At some point it would be nice if someone would build a 1/60 model of one; I saw two five foot long MK V's about 15 years ago but the guy wasn't selling them. (To be honest I think that was closer to 1/35.) I think it was Sci-Fi City, but couldn't say for certain. Anyway, my kitbashing skills fall far short of making something like that, so I'll just have to fall back on the Basement's limitless storage space and dig out the Warzone Bauhaus Grizzly (the old style) that's been waiting for attention for so long. And I can use some 1/87 RAFM Heavy Gear to be the infantry. Another couple sets of Armorcast craters, and me and my buds can head out to the backyard and play Ogre in the sun!

Sunday, March 23, 2014

Hi Kids, No doubt everyone out there realizes that Elvira has always been a big heartthrob of mine, second only to Cindy the Nintendo Girl. (thats a whole nutha story...) So naturally when I heard a vicious rumor that she was making an appearance nearby, it was time to fill Evy with gas and hit the road! The Mad Monster Party continues tomorrow (Sunday) so if anyone is near Charlotte NC you still have time to bust out. (Pun intended)

Easy there laddie! Keep it together..... Cassandra Peterson: The original femme fetale! I guess you could call this a "before and after" shot. Who would've thought she would look so lovely and wholesome.... Be still my heart.....

Another old fav, for different reasons obviously, Rowdy Roddy Piper. "Hell Comes to Frogtown" is such a helluva movie.... If you haven't seen it or "The Continuing Adventures of Tennessee Buck" you simply have not lived. No, TCAOTB doesn't star The Piper, but its in the same genre.

And we all remember the tv show "V" from the dark ages before cable.... its Diana aka Jane Badler, who made the world a totally different place when she swallowed an entire live guinea pig on tv. This might have given Ozzie the idea to start biting bats during concerts. Just between you and me, she told me that it was mostly special effects, she didn't really eat a guinea pig. Thank God!
Why is this shot out of focus? Ask my cameraman... the schmo.

There are quite a few stars there, William Shatner was there BUT I missed him 'cause it took two hours waiting in line just to get into the joint! Arg!!!!!! John Schneider is also there, missed him too... In the future, I'd like to suggest to the organizers to put the schedule on the website, or postcards, or posters, or some damn thing so us poor ignorant fools at least know where and when these dudes are gonna come out of hiding..... I don't expect Shatner or anyone else to sign autographs 10 hours a day, so ya gotta let us know the real skinny, ok? I mean, damn!

Wednesday, March 19, 2014

I have put more of the old style archer bits to use. I assembled a unit of skeleton archers awhile back using new skeleton bodies and twenty year old bits but now a couple more archers for the unit.

I ended up having to pin the arms on but I think it has a a more dymanic pose.

They only model from the last second chance lot that didn't need to the stripped or repaired. It originally was armed with an old style long spear in its off hand but I managed to remove it and replace it with the correct drawing bow arm.

After adding these two archers I will have twelve models in the unit. I am debating adding a musician and standard bearer to bring the unit up to fourteen models. The current plan is to build a second unit of archers for the 10k of Undead Oldhammer game but I am having to reorganize the army list and may end up with just one unit of archers.

Monday, March 17, 2014

Hi Kids, This one is a radical departure from what I usually read, in fact you could say I went completely off the reservation. But every once and awhile I take a break from history and check out what the cool kids are doing. And in this case I'm glad I did. "Bridge of Birds" is an absolute masterpiece. It is subtitled "A Novel of Ancient China That Never Was." It's basically a fairy tale of epic proportions as the two main characters; Number 10 Ox and Li Kao (who has a slight character flaw) go on a series of adventures to save the children from a mysterious illness. They encounter all sorts of weirdness and bizarre characters to find the Great Root of Power, the only cure for the kids. My personal fav is when Ox has to perform the Sword Dance against a ghost with a broken heart. "It is said that the challenge of the Sword Dance is stronger than death itself. I'd do it myself if I could be ninety again, but it looks as though you can have the honor of chopping off your arms and legs," says Li Kao. Hundreds if not thousands of people are killed or maimed each year during the Sword Dance! Barry has a serious gift with words, and I'm going to have to check and see if he's ever written anything else. My used copy was only US$2.00, so get thee to a bookstore post haste!

Friday, March 14, 2014

Hi Kids, Finally got off my butt and scheduled a game of Firestorm Armada, and dragged my Sorylian fleet kicking and screaming into the battle! I have this weird rule about not used unpainted figs, so while everyone else I know has been playing this game I've been holding off, painting away. Naturally, as soon as I was finished everyone had shifted to different games. Argh! Anyway, we finally got back around the deep space and played a game! Amazing, I know!

The Sorylian Fleet, painted in my own weird blueish/inverted teardrop camo. I supersized the teardrops on the battlewagon (The Battleaxe) since painting the smaller variety would have taken too long. You can see the crusiers have much better camo, I painted them first. Yep, gonna have to glue them onto the bases to stop those weird angles of attack. I named all my ships after tools; such as Lugwrench, Pipewrench, Crowbar, Sledgehammer, Rubber Mallet, Lead Pipe, Billyclub, and Spork.

The Bad Guys, the Drindrenzi. These are second printing ships, I think they are a little bigger than the first gen ships.

The Bad Guys deployed.

I left off the carrier and my second squadron of escorts just to make the fleets even. I'm trying to from a line of battle to use my best guns, mounted broadside. I've already blasted two BG escorts, and lost one.

My counterclockwise tactic seems to be working and the enemy escorts are crushed, while not taking much more damage myself.

Since friendly ships don't block shooting, I set up for a massive combined strike against the enemy battlewagon while my escorts try to keep the enemy crusiers busy, doing better than I expected, they blow up another one!

YE GODS! The enemy battlewagon moves faster than expected and cuts through my crusier line, unleashing massive firepower in all directions! Two crusiers are destroyed outright while the third is crippled!

Eye-yi-yi..... The fleets are back to evenly matched now, as my massive numerical advantage is wiped out! The enemy battlewagon is down to one hull point, while the Battleaxe is down to two!

The game ends due to a random die roll, and everyone starts rowing for home! Victory Points were within one of each other. I really wonder who would've won if we had continued, but was happy just to have some survivors of the fleet after my first game!

Thursday, March 13, 2014

Hi Kids, Late last year I posted about the new game released by Marshal Enterprises, and all the pictures were of the early stages of the game, before all the reinforcements arrived and made everything oh so much more impressive. I figured I'd rectify that and show some pictures later in the game. These are from the last few turns before everything was cleaned up.

Oh yeah, we got your counter density up quite a bit! The French are on the left of the picture, while the Allies are wrapped around them.

I've heard through the grapevine that all the copies of this game (they printed 400) have all been sold, so if you still need one your local store might have it, or you might need to go searching Consimworld or Boardgamegeek. Or ebay. Or all three.

Wednesday, March 12, 2014

The latest batch of second chance skeletons included a selection of old bits from the original Skeleton army box. I built a unit of Grim Reapers awhile back to play against Chuckaroobob. I didn't have enough of the old style scythe bits so I ended up converting Scythes from zombie arms to round out the unit.

Thanks to the new scythe bits I have built five more Grim Reapers. This will let me field two units, one of fifteen models and one of ten models for Oldhammer games. For 8th edition games, they will round out my Grave guard unit to an even forty models.

Tuesday, March 11, 2014

Hi kids, although its a little late, here's what the Feb snow looked like in my hood. We get snow like this about once every 15 years. Naturally, we all panic when it does.... These shots were taken after a couple days of melting.

Here are two of my trusty steeds; Suzy, a 1994 Suzuki Swift GT (still showing damage from two deer strikes); and Sammy, a 1991 Samurai. I had just used Sammy to jumpstart Suzy, she stalled and shorted out in the snow a couple days earlier. Apparently Samurais are a thing of interest nowadays, I've had people follow me around to ask if I want to sell him quite a few times recently, and just last week some kid took his picture as he drove by.

In a nearby shopping center, a Bobcat moves snow into impossible piles, at least for NC.

Monday, March 10, 2014

When I started planning my 10k point Undead army for the impending Oldhammer mega battle against ChuckarooBob I planned to field four Screaming Skull Catapults. I didn't have any Screaming Skull catapults so I planned to use the Bombards I scratch built to use for my Victorian science fiction Venusian Lizardmen. Then I found another deal on Evil Bay.

With time and patience I finally won an auction for two complete Screaming skull catapults for US$20 shipped. They actually have a decent paint job. I am thinking that I might just touch them up a bit, then give them a heavy ink wash and then go back for some details and a highlight. I will still probably use two of the Bombards with skeleton crews unless I can get two more screaming skull catapults cheaply.

I had to rebase one of the crewmen and I am debating on whether to mount the catapult on a 50x100mm base like the newer Tomb King Screaming skull catapult. The funny thing is I haven't collected Tomb King or Chaos Dwarf armies. I have models to field armies for just about everything else in the Warhammer fantasy game. After picking up the Citadel Mummies, oop Carrion and these Screaming Skull Catapults to go with the Skeleton warriors, Archers and Horsemen I already have I can put close to a 2500 point Tomb king army on the table. It would be a fluffy skeleton horde army but I would be able to put it on the table. Funny how things work out.

Friday, March 7, 2014

I won another auction for a batch of skeletons in very bad shape. The up side was it had ten complete skeleton horses in the lot and they were in decent shape. My planned 10k of Oldhammer Undead I want to have two units of undead cavalry. I already have a unit of the old school style skeleton cavalry and some mounted Wights I just needed some more Horsemen to fill out the unit and these fit the bill perfectly.

I assembled the ten skeleton horses easy enough but it took me awhile to clean up and reposition the riders.

I have a wight champion and musician for the unit but needed to add a standard bearer. The skeleton body is the last skeleton from my Skeleton army box I bought back in 1990. I had saved one skeleton to use as a crewman on the skeleton chariot but never did finish it. The model has been sitting in various bits boxes for over twenty years. The horse and armor came from the latest lot of second chance skeletons and the arm is a left handed tomb king sword arm.

The standard arm is from the old style skeleton command frame. The flag is the old style skeleton banner with all the skull and bone bits trimmed of the banner edge and them mounted to trimmed down pole on it side. I think it has more action than just using the standard draped down banner.

The lot also lacked a couple long spears but once again I had a few of them left over from back in the day. Two more twenty plus year old bits finally being put to good use.

A couple of the long spear arms had seen better days but I was able to pin them on and just need to add a little bit of greenstuff to finish them off.

I plan to add shields once I get the left arms on them. I have enjoyed getting these together but my increasing backlog of models is getting even larger.

Wednesday, March 5, 2014

If you have been following for a while you know I like getting second hand models in bad shape and then rebuilding them. i picked up another lot of second chance skeletons and they were just about a lost cause. I mainly bought the lot because of a group of skeleton horses included but I could use the skeletons too. Them they showed up at the door. Some were covered in paint so it looked like a couple had just been dipped instead of brush painted. Some were caked in super glue and others hand been repaired with gobs of rubber cement. It did come with a bunch of the old style bow and scythe bits from the original Skeleton army box. I tried cleaning them a little and them just dumped the lot int the simple green.

After a couple weeks and a couple different scribblings I finally came up with these. They are still in bad shape but good enough for me to work with.

This was probably the worse model of the lot. It originally was covered with paper soaked in glue to make it into either a necromancer or wraith. It didn't have feet to begin with and the rest of the bit came off when I cut off the paper robes. I debated just dropping him in the bits box to use on a terrain piece. Instead I hunted up some new feet. I pinned both the legs and then found some feet I had cut off for a mounted wraith conversion I did years ago.

I call him "Died with his boots on" I just need to add a bit of green stuff and he will be ready to go.

After a bit of work the newly based mob. I came up short an old style head and had to use a newer one. I have since found the errant head but will leave it for a later time.

Of course once I started trying to put arms on them I would break the legs off of another skeleton. I repinned them but the join was still moving and it was a matter of time till they broke again. Then it hit me, in the immortal words of Johnny Cash "I got Chains, Chains around my Feet". So a little green stuff to make the shackles and a section of chain from and old chaos marauder flail. It will keep the legs from breaking and adds a bunch of character to the model.

They were all in pieces and two of the riders have broken weapons. Even though broken apart all the parts were there and the two broken scythes are an easy fix. They are missing their flying bases but I have a bag of them I have saved up over the years. I may have enough of the old style hex shaped flying bases but I have to dig them out of the "Closet of Doom". The last choice to base them is to use brass rod and 40mm square bases like I did for my Fell Bats.
I have put them into the simple green to strip off the paint and will get started on them soon.